Thursday, June 16, 2011

France, I don’t like you anymore. Because what is the point of having all those smart, cultivated, social-democratically inclined secular people if it turns out they are such self-satisfied creeps? . . . Almost as repellent as the sexual entitlement of French men, with their insistence on their seigneurial right to “heavy flirting,” is the docility and feminine-mystique-ization of the French women who enable them. Well, maybe it’s not entirely their fault: not only do they never get to eat a square meal (oh, so that’s why French women don’t get fat), masses of them are on tranquilizers —- twice as many as French men, and one of the highest rates in the world. But how pathetic is it to see them rising in defense of their right to be pawed by their bosses (“in France we don’t want war between the sexes. . .” writes Laurence Masurel, former political editor of Paris Match). Or applauding men for betraying them as if it’s proof of their manly greatness, as did Anne Sinclair, DSK’s zillionaire wife: “I am quite proud! For a political man, it is important to seduce.” How out of it are French women? In one poll, they were even a little bit more likely than men to believe that DSK was the victim of a plot (a view held by a majority of both sexes) and less likely than men to believe he was definitely not a victim of a plot.